451 Challenge – 451 Fridays

I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 at school and we just finished watching the movie today and the last scene of the movie got me thinking. What happened was the “Book People” are walking around reciting the books which they had committed to memorize. If you have read the book then you will understand what I am talking about and if you have not then it is tough luck for you. You will have to read the book to find out.

This last scene then reminded me of a blog which I had come across. 451 Challenge. This blog is no longer in use as far as I can tell because there has not been a post since April of 2010 but I think that I would like to try and continue on this little idea. What you have to do is choose a novel and commit to memorizing it. I think that I am going to try and memorize Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Night by Elie Wiesel or the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. I know that this is a lot to commit to doing but even if you just memorized a part of a book. Like if a book is put into parts try to memorize the first part of the book. I think that this is a great idea. So leave your name and your blog in the Mister Linkey thing or if you do not have a blog leave your name in the comment section. I would really like to get a lot of people to do this because it would really be fun.

The list is really long but the books are all really good choices. If there is a really good novel that is not on this list tell me what it is and I will add it to the list. Also poems are a good thing to start to memorize to practice because they are smaller (usually) and you can memorize a bunch of them so if you do not want to commit to an entire book, try to commit to a few poems. But try to do classic poems.

Also if you do join in, please share a link on your blog to my post. Thanks.

1984 – George Orwell

A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul

A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

A Confederacy of Dunces – John O’Toole

A Solitary Blue – Cynthia Voigt

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith

Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank

Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery

Ashes in the Wind – Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand

Atonement – Ian McEwan

Black Beauty – Anna Sewell

Blake’s Poetry & Designs – William Blake

Blindness – Jose Saramago

Call It Sleep – Henry Roth

Calvin and Hobbes – Bill Watterson

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Centennial – James Michener

Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White

Collected Poems – Robert Frost

Collected Poems – William Butler Yeats

Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Cry, The Beloved Country – Alan Paton

Demonology – Rick Moody

Devil in the White City – Erik Larsen

Diaries of Anais Nin – Anais Nin

Different Seasons – Stephen King

Dr. Seuss’s ABC – Dr. Seuss

Dr. Zhivago – Boris Pasternak

Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card

Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

Fingersmith – Sarah Waters

Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise – Ruth Reichel